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the o.k. (shoe) corral

lamest post name ever, apologies. it was the only thing i could think of, since this is a post about baskets. baskets to hold shoes (but i will say that i think my shoe corral is more than ok).

we don’t have an entry way, or foyer if you will, in our apartment. when you walk in from the hallway, you enter our dining room immediately.

what do you usually do when you walk inside? take off your shoes. so this is what our non-entry way usually looks like:

a mess of shoes (with my purse and umbrellas thrown in the mix too).

i’m not the neatest person (ryan will be the first to tell you that) but the shoes drove me crazy. every single time i came in or out of my place, which is a lot.

to clean up when people came over we would organize the mess by lining up the pairs together. which still drove me crazy since it just looked like a less-messy bunch of shoes.

while we have a shoe rack in our closet, it is already full of lesser worn shoes and it’s just not reasonable to think every time we came in we would bring our shoes to the closet. so a quick, cheap and non-ugly solution was in order. i figured my best best was a large basket and i set off on a search. i shopped both my house and a couple stores.

contender 1:

this one was owned by me already (home goods a couple years ago). i love the color, but it’s small and limits the number of shoes stored conveniently next to the door.

contender 2:

this dark beauty is from home goods. it had a liner in it, but it was ugly. it has a lot of space, with room to add more shoes. but i’m not sure i’m digging the really dark color against the light wall and floors.

contender 3:

a large basket with a lid from home goods. love the size (all the shoes are in there with room to spare) and that you can close it to cover the clutter even more. not loving the little doohickey bead things though.

contender 4:

a gorgeous basket from target. love the color, but it’s one of the smaller ones and kind of smelled funky.

and the winner is…….

……..

……..

the size and ability to close it really sealed the deal. i still don’t like the huge, round beads for securing it closed (which will never be used) but i have already gotten used to them.

and i like it even better moved against the other wall, tucked into the corner.

next problem to solve: the mess of keys and beck’s walk necessities on the sideboard , my purse and other items laying around, and dining room chairs serving as a coat rack.

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3 thoughts on “the o.k. (shoe) corral”

Love the post. We have that same problem, too. Just yesterday i put away 4 pairs of Teddy’s shoes and 3 of mine. We have storage issues. Teddy tackled our bedroom closet shoe situation and bought the Ikea Billy bookcase and we placed it horizontally and now i have cubbies for all my shoes. Plus, got cute colorful bins to hide some of the other accessories (belts, purses, etc.)